HILL PEOPLE—BHOOTEAS AND NEPAULESE.Page 264.
HILL PEOPLE—BHOOTEAS AND NEPAULESE.Page 264.
CHAPTER XXX
MY AYAH
A thornless, black blossom grew upon the hills that stretch between Poona and Bombay. When I was domiciled in a bungalow on those hills, I had the good luck to gather that black blossom into the garland of my personal retinue. By birth she was a Hindoo, a high-caste Hindoo; by profession and necessity she was an ayah. I never knew a sweeter-natured woman. Unlike most of her people, she had learned very little from the Europeans. Her mental horizon had scarcely widened through her contact with us. She hadn’t a big mind, but she had a huge heart; I never met so impersonal a member of my own sex. All she thought or wished for herself was to bathe at sunrise, and, when she was very hungry, to eat a little. The only dissipation she ever craved was to sit some moments in the sun. The only necessity of her nature was to love something.
I broke down at the end of a hard, hot season in Bombay. My husband said that it was an attack of fever, caught from spending too much time in the native city. I feared that it was an attack of conscience, brought on by spending too much money in the native bazaars. But I never told him so; I never can bring myself to contradict my husband. At all events, I broke down very thoroughly, and was peremptorily forbidden the trip to Calcutta, which my husband and our company were about to take. To remain in Bombay was out of the question. We found a Hindoo gentleman who had a bungalow at Khandalah, a bungalow he wished to let. Khandalah is a railway station mid-way between Poona and Bombay. There is a sanitarium, not far from there, for sick soldiers. Save for their occasional presence, when convalescent, the place is destitute of Europeans. We went to look at the bungalow. I must not stop to describe the wonderful journey up to the top of the high hills, or I shall never reach Khandalah. I must not stop to tell you of Khandalah (a clump of many native huts and a few native bungalows, sprinkled like eccentric fungi on the aromatic hillsides), or I shall never reach the bungalow. I must not stop to tell you of the bungalow, with all its glory of fruit and flowers, and all its wealth of dilapidation, or I shall never reach my ayah. To be brief, I fell in love with Khandalah and with Mr. Bhaishankar’s bungalow. You would have done the same if you had been there. We rented the bungalow. In three days we took possession. The order of our procession when we left Bombay was:
1. My husband and I.2. Our two children.3. Our European nurse and housekeeper.4. My little daughter’s ayah.5. John, my husband’s Madrassi boy.6. Mettu, my Mohammedan boy.7. Abdul, my little son’s chokera.8. A mistree.9. A dhursi, who brought his wife, their five children and his sister (I think the sister was another wife, called a sister out of deference to my narrow views of matrimony).10. Three dogs.11. Twelve boxes (chiefly filled with provisions, for I had stored most of my chests of raiment at Bombay).
1. My husband and I.
2. Our two children.
3. Our European nurse and housekeeper.
4. My little daughter’s ayah.
5. John, my husband’s Madrassi boy.
6. Mettu, my Mohammedan boy.
7. Abdul, my little son’s chokera.
8. A mistree.
9. A dhursi, who brought his wife, their five children and his sister (I think the sister was another wife, called a sister out of deference to my narrow views of matrimony).
10. Three dogs.
11. Twelve boxes (chiefly filled with provisions, for I had stored most of my chests of raiment at Bombay).
The next day my husband had to leave us. He had an appointment to again unfurl the Shakespearian banner over the black hole of Calcutta.
Three days after, the ayah we had grew homesick, said she was dying and wanted to die in Bombay. I sent her back. I grew very ill and another ayah was a necessity. We took one of the only two who applied. I studied her for weeks,—I studied a good many things that hot weather. I read a quantity of English literature that ought to lift me into conversational pre-eminence for years. I had abundant leisure. For over four months I saw only five European faces—my two children, the European woman who has been for years our faithful servant and friend, a doctor (from Lanauli, the nearest European settlement), and the nurse who came to help him fight my illness.
Ayah (I have had many ayahs, but only one is enthroned in my memory)—Ayah was very stupid, I thought, when she first came. She knew very little English and she didn’t learn a dozen new words all the time she was with me. But she had the gift of divination. If you were half kind to her she knew all your wants instinctively, and she had the grace of giving joyful service.
I have been served more or less—usually less—all over the world, and I believe that there are only two perfect servant-races left: the Southern darkies of the United states and the natives of India. The Japanese servants are deft, but they never love you. And there is no perfection in service in which there is no affection. If you speak a kind, familiar word to a Japanese servant he regards you with frigid contempt. Do it to any other servant in the world and he presumes upon it—unless he is a native of India or an American darkie. Those two understand it, rejoice in it, and become your staunch friends, but no whit the less your humble servants. Even here, in England, the race of servants is dying out; they have ceased to respect themselves and their work. Consequently they are ill at ease and make you so.
I never knew Ayah’s history nor learned to pronounce her name,—though I used often to see her family and knew all their circumstances. Her most vivid characteristic was an intense terror of all British soldiers. But she was with me a long time before I found it out. We were playing in Mhow; I had taken Ayah to the regimental theatre, as I had no other maid with me. My husband’s boy called her from my dressing-room when I was changing. She came back with the first frown I ever saw on her dear, old, black face. To my utter amazement she spoke sulkily. “Our sahib is drinking with the Colonel sahib,” she said bitterly, “and the Colonel sahib say will memsahib have some coffee burruf, or some wine burruf?” She was openly disappointed with me when I did not decline both. She went out without a word, and came back with the mess-corporal. When she had taken the tray from him she closed the door with rude abruptness.
“What is the matter, Ayah?” I asked. (I knew that she never did anything without a reason.)
She turned to me quickly and I saw that there were tears in her eyes. Homer says that Athene was cow-eyed. My ayah’s beautiful eyes, too, were bovine.
“Oh, memsahib, I so sorry our sahib drink with a lal coatie sahib! I so cross you let Colonel sahib send my memsahib some thing.”
“Why, Ayah?”
“Our sahib is good; my memsahib is good. All lal coatie sahib is bad.”
The next night, as we drove to the theatre, Ayah carried four cubic feet of something wrapped in a bit of blanket. My husband noticed it, and asked her—
“In the name of all the native wonders, what have you got there, Ayah?”
“Me got burruf and beer and chickeny for my memsahib. My memsahib not want drink or eat from Colonel lal coatie!”
Poor Ayah! the longer she stayed with me the more I grieved her, for I never went into an Indian cantonment without learning to like the redcoat soldiers more and more. But she never ceased to strive for my reformation. It was in Allahabad that an officer in the South Wales Borderers foolishly persisted in becoming very chummy with my small son. The result was that one day, while we were drinking tea, our four-year-old contrived to cut a slit, about two inches long, in the military trousers. Our hotel was a long way from our friend’s quarters and he looked very miserable. I called to Ayah for needle and thread. There was a gleam of triumph on her black face when she saw why they were needed. But, when I moved to repair the damage my baby had done, she snatched the thimble from my finger almost roughly.
“Don’t touch, memsahib,” she whispered hoarsely, and then, speaking with the downcast eyes of Oriental humility, “Ayah will serve the sahib.”
And so she took from me what she thought a degradation. But she did the mending very badly, and my children’s clothes could have told how really well she could sew.
Ayah was generosity incarnated, and in my moments of hospitality was always my proud assistant. But if any soldier friend broke bread with us, she had a horrid habit of keeping tally of all he ate and drank. In Muttra, a friend of my husband’s, a captain in the 7th Dragoons, knowing that we must be almost starving at the Dâk Bungalow, drove up, after our first performance, and sent in to know if he might bring in some supper. I said, “He might indeed.” The supper was in three baskets, the first filled with cold jellied meats and dainty supper sundries; the second held beer, and in the third and largest basket there was more “Perier Jouet” than we used in our week’s stay. Captain —— shared with us the supper his kind thoughtfulness had provided. When I said good-night and left the men free to smoke till daylight, Ayah rose from her post of vantage on the verandah and followed me into my room. When she had done all I needed, and I told her to put out the light and go, she paused to mutter—
“The Captain sahib drink two bottle beer, and eat three piece sanwish.”
That so amused me that I told my husband in the morning. It vexed him, and he took Ayah to task.
“Your memsahib would have had no supper if Captain —— had not put himself out to bring it,” he said.
“He is a mean sahib,” was the answer; “he bring my memsahib wine, and then he drink it. And too he smoke plenty cigarette when memsahib go. I smell him.”
I never could find out that Ayah had any cause for her dislike of the military. The disproportion between European men and women in India has not been without unpleasant results, but I am convinced that none of those results had ever touched Ayah. I believe that her feeling was the result of a fierce, protoplasmic hatred that was engermed in the nature of her ancestors, before the Mutiny. But nothing ever softened it. The history of my life in India is the history of kindness heaped upon me by soldier hands. Ayah never let that kindness move her. In Campbellpore the Colonel’s bungalow was given up to us. We were fed from the officers’ mess, the Elephants (the Elephant Battery was at Campbellpore) saluted us, and the regimental drag rushed us up and down the one sandy street. Ayah took it grimly. All over India, after we had reduced our company of twenty-seven to four, the officers, and often officers’ wives, played with us, enabling us to playCaste,Our Boys, etc., to good business, and to tarry in the pleasant cantonments. And the men—they used to make my dressing-rooms so cozy, and wait upon me hand and foot. I could fill a volume with grateful memories of the regiments in India. Ayah never wavered in her hate, and yet she was so grateful to any civilian who gave me a rose or my baby a rattle. Only one soldier ever won her liking or approval. When we went from Calcutta to Rangoon there was on board a tall, stern man with a fine face and the bearing of a chief. He was ceaselessly good to our babies, and Ayah always spoke to me of him as the “big, good sahib.” When we reached Singapore, this gentleman came one night to my husband’s dressing-room door, to offer us the first of many kind hospitalities. He was dressed in uniform, but Ayah, whom I had sent to reclaim my cold cream, knew him. She rushed back to me—
“Memsahib, memsahib, Warren sahib is a lal coatie.”
“Yes,” I said, “Sir Charles Warren is the Commander-in-Chief here. The burra lal coatie sahib, Ayah.”
She almost wept. But her intuitive recognition of a great and noble man triumphed over her prejudice. A month later, when we were leaving Singapore, I heard her tell John, the Madrassi—
“In England the Rajah make some sahibs be lal coaties. English Rajah make Warren sahib be lal coatie. Warren sahib very sorry. Warren sahib very good sahib.”
I meant to tell his Excellency, when I saw him next, but I forgot to do so. That’s a pity, for he would have had such a splendid laugh.
Ayah was not a great respecter of rankper se. The presence of a Rajah threw our other native servants into great excitement. Ayah took it very calmly.
She broke her caste repeatedly. She ate whatever I gave her to eat. She literally feasted on bread I had broken. My dhursi would have died first. But the Hindoo loathing of pork never left Ayah. When we went to Khandalah we took too much bacon. The population was entirely native and we couldn’t give it away. Finally, I told Ayah to put it in a basket and take it down to one of the gullies, and throw it away. She flatly refused to touch it, directly or indirectly. It was the only time she ever demurred at any order of mine.
When we were travelling she lay or sat at my feet. On the seat she would not sit, unless to hold one of the children. We always gave her what was left from our lunch when we ate in the train. Nothing would induce her to eat one crumb until we had entirely finished. As my children ate most of the time, she often suffered a long self-inflicted fast.
Her favourite drink was the liquor of tinned asparagus. She learned to make a French salad dressing, as I like it. I have never been able to teach a white servant that!
She would fan me for unbroken hours. How often I have fallen asleep under the wonderful soothing of her touch! She would make the fortune of a Turkish bath.
Her love for children and animals never failed. There was a really passionate attachment between her and my monkey, “Ned.” I think that both their hearts answered to the throb of some distant kinship.
A THORNLESS BLACK BLOSSOM.Page 273.
A THORNLESS BLACK BLOSSOM.Page 273.
She grew to be very deft in my dressing-room. Her wonderful anticipation of my slightest wish made her invaluable in the excitement of a “first night.” She never spoke in the theatre unnecessarily. I used often to let her stand in the wings and watch the play. She liked that, but she always looked on with an expression of disapproval until I came on to the stage. Then she appeared delighted. No matter how badly I did my work, no matter what the audience thought, Ayah thought me splendid and ignored the other actors. I have often thought what a dramatic critic she would make.
We sent her to the circus in Bombay. She had never seen anything of the kind before. She was so moved by fright and delight that she lost her way and was brought home to the hotel, very late, by two policemen. She was ill with terror, and for weeks didn’t get over her shame, which I fear was added to by my husband’s teasing.
I took her to see the Taj Mahal, when we were in Agra,—a monument of human love and accomplishment of human art so supreme that I would scarcely dare to write about it. I showed Ayah all over it, and she said, “It’s a big bungalow!”
She was genuinely and deeply grateful. She was strictly honest. She took the greatest pleasure in all my baby’s pretty clothes. I hoped never to part with her. Her children were married, and she would have gone anywhere with me. But her poor old mother, to whom she was devoted, was ill, and I was obliged to say, “Go to her, Ayah, if you think you ought.” My husband took her from Karachi to Bombay in August of 1892, and I never saw her again.
A friend, who was our guest in Karachi, and who had come from Mooltan to spend with us our last days in India, went with me to see them off. He was very angry because I took my ayah in my arms and kissed her when we parted. Dear soldier boy! I liked him immensely, but I loved my ayah better than any living thing I left in India. I had proved her worth, and I knew it. She loved me and I loved her. We had stood together beside a baby’s cradle and fought a long fight with the Angel of Death. I shall never forget her; and I never remember her without feeling in my heart what Rudyard Kipling had the genius to say—
By the living God that made you,You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
By the living God that made you,You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
By the living God that made you,You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
By the living God that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
CHAPTER XXXI
SAMBO
Hehad but one shirt and it was very ragged. He washed it every few nights after dark. He was too young for a coolie, and too old for a chokera. When I was cross with him I called him “coolie,” and he hung his head. When I was pleased with him I called him “chokera,” and he looked up and smiled. We never could pronounce his name. It is not the custom in India to call your native servants by name, but we quarrelled with the custom. Failing to gain the mastery over his proper appellation, my children called him “Sambo”—perhaps partly because that was something like his name, and partly because they had some inherited memory of darkie servants on their great-great-grandfather’s plantation.
I paid him three annas a day. His duties were various. He did errands with a fair degree of precision, but never with celerity. He fed the pets and the chickens. He helped the other servants a very little. He played with and waited on the children. In that he excelled.
We were keeping house on the hills. We were within a stone’s throw of a railway station; but we were miles from the nearest European. At first there were four of us; my two children and I, and their nurse, who was also my housekeeper and rock of defence. We needed an additional servant to do indefinite scraps of work. The Hindoo stationmaster recommended Sambo, and Sambo was engaged.
He had less knowledge of English than any one else I ever met who attempted to speak it. When he was frightened he forgot the little English he did know. And he almost always was frightened—at least, when he first came to us. He developed and improved amazingly under kindness, as almost all natives do.
When he had been with us a few days, he ran to me crying bitterly that the “chota sahib” had struck him. My small boy and he had been playing horse, and my son had been either so careless or so naughty as to strike Sambo too hard. I made the child give Sambo an anna of his pocket-money, for indemnity. Sambo was delighted. A few days after, I caught him trying to induce his young master to repeat the blow for which he had, on a former occasion, been so handsomely recompensed. I informed them both that when the next blow was struck I should “cut” Sambo’s pay and my youngster’s pocket-money, one half-anna each, and present the anna to the mallie’s children. I hope that my little one never again struck Sambo; if he did, Sambo never told on him.
I was giving Sambo a severe scolding one afternoon about his appearance. One shoulder was out of his shirt, one arm was half bare, and the skirt of his shirt hung about his bare brown legs like a coarse fringe. In India one grows accustomed to the nude, as one does in the Pitti Palace or in the Vatican itself. But one likes to draw the line somewhere with one’s personal attendants. I had often spoken to Sambo about his rapidly-diminishing garment, and thought his disregard of what I had said impertinent. So now I spoke very sharply, and he slunk away. The dhursies, who were sitting on one end of the verandah, looked after him and laughed. They were both sleek and fat and amply clad. My ayah was at the other end of the verandah building brick houses for my baby. She rose quietly and came to me. “Memsahib,” she said softly, but with the confidence of a conscious favourite, “no scold Sambo, no be angry. He got one shirt—no more. Not Sambo fault. He so poor. His grandmother so old—so poor. Sambo no father—no mother.” Then she went back to her “missie baba.” When my ayah told me anything I knew that it was true. It is not “correct” in India to let your conscience prick you about anything in connection with the natives. But I have never been correct, and I hope I never shall be. I looked from the dhursies, who were making my boy a dozen new white suits, to the other end of the verandah. We were on the hills, living quite out of the world, but my baby’s little white frock had pale-blue shoulder-knots. She had whole blue socks on her little pink feet. And the dainty frock itself was the second she had worn that day. I went inside. Sambo was sitting on the ground, outside the nursery door, trying to mend his tatters. He had borrowed a needle and thread from my housekeeper. I called her to me, and we put our heads together. We found some Roman shirts and togas in one of our boxes. They had originally been worn by gentlemen of artistic temperament, residing in Melbourne, who had impersonated Roman senators for the nominal honorarium of two shillings a night. The shirts and togas were made of unbleached calico, and were bordered with red, or blue, or yellow. They were all too large for Sambo. Our Victorian “captain of the supers” had been particular as to height, and Sambo was only fourteen. I made the dhursies put away their work and alter the six best shirts for Sambo. I meant it kindly, but I almost killed him. The night they were finished, he lay awake until morning, crying for joy, crying himself almost into a fever. I gave him the togas to match the shirts and he was very proud. I gave him two huge tartans that had done duty inRob Roy. The natives came for miles to see the memsahib who had given her chokera “six shirt, six sari, and two shawl.” Dear old Ayah was as delighted as Sambo, though she had children of her own to whom I had usually given all our discarded garments.
Sambo was slowly emerging from a frightened, almost useless encumbrance, into a cheerful, moderately useful servant, when he met with a shocking misfortune. It completely unnerved him, and threatened to set him back three months in his development. We were living at Khandalah. Most of our provisions came from Bombay. We sent, however, to Lanaulie—a distance of four miles—for soda, lemonade, butter, and anything of which we ran short. Sometimes we took Lanaulie in in our afternoon drive. Sometimes we sent Sambo. He would take an empty box three feet by two by three on his head, and march off cheerfully enough, returning a few hours later with the things I wanted. We always gave him a list and the money. One Saturday we discovered as late as three o’clock that we were out of sugar, butter, tea, and some other articles which were, to our pampered European palates, necessities. “We must send Sambo on the train,” I said, “else he’ll be too late.” The little general store at which we dealt closed at six. Because the boy was to go luxuriously on the train, I made out rather a long order. I gave him six annas and a ten-rupee note, saying, “Tie the ten rupees up tight, and buy your ticket out of the six annas.” Sambo went,—but he failed to return. I had told him he might come back by train. Travelling in India is not expensive. When it is done third-class it is decidedly cheap. We were living on the line between Poona and Bombay, and the trains were frequent. He should have been back at five. At six we wondered. At seven we were a little anxious. At eight I had my dinner, minus sugar, butter, and a few other incidentals. Ayah sat on the floor sewing buttons on to the children’s clothes; her face was drawn and stern. Just when dinner was over, Sambo rushed in. “Memsahib! Memsahib!” he cried, and fell at my feet. He had thrown his box down at the door. It was empty. My bearer and the khitmatgar dragged him to his feet. His big thick lips were quite white, and they were trembling piteously. Every vein on his body showed white and rigid against his black skin. It was a long time before we could get him to speak a word. When at last he did speak, it was in Hindustani. Ayah translated, and with unconcealed anger, though she scarcely lifted her eyes from her work. “He say man no give tings memsahib want. He no have money. He lose ten rupee. He say he pray memsahib not beat hard.” Ayah evidently repeated the last sentence reluctantly.
“Tell him that European women do not strike servants,” I said grandly.
The unwonted occurrence had drawn all the servants to the door. At my remark they burst into concerted laughter. It is not Anglo-Indian etiquette for a servant to laugh at a memsahib; yet my servants, who were fairly well bred, laughed now; even my own “boy,” who was usually a model of propriety. The cook, a dignified old Goanese, who took many liberties because he knew he was the bestchefbetween Poona and Bombay, took a step forward. “Memsahib,” said the old fellow, “vera much memsahib, European beat plenty—plenty hard.”—“Then tell him that I don’t,” I said rather shortly, and went out. To do myself justice I was very angry. It was too late to send anywhere for what I required. Moreover, that ten-rupee note had been my last one; and my next letter from my husband in Calcutta was not due until Tuesday. And in Khandalah there were neither banks nor pawnshops.
Sambo came to me at five every morning, and went home at eight or nine at night. That night Ayah said to me, “Sambo not come back morning morrow. He thief. He too frightened.” I had a long talk with the European woman who has for years shared all my ups and downs, nursing my babies, keeping my accounts, mending my gowns, and doing me a hundred other loving services. We didn’t know what to think. The ten rupees were gone, and at an inconvenient moment. But we were in doubt whether Sambo had lost or stolen them.
When I woke in the morning Sambo was stealing about the house doing his work with trembling hands. His big, soft eyes were very red. When I saw that he had come back I was sure that he was innocent of any worse fault than carelessness. My housekeeper went to the stationmaster, from whom Sambo had bought his ticket, and to the storekeeper in Lanaulie. Neither could give any conclusive testimony. He had bought his ticket out of the six-anna piece. He had handed in my order at the little store; it was then that he had discovered, or seemed to discover, his loss. He had cried and seemed very terrified. He had spent hours hunting for the note. I thought it greatly to his credit that he had come back to me; he could so easily have disappeared. But he had been careless, and I more than half suspected him of having shown the note on the train, in a moment of boyish braggadocio. I told him that night that I should cut his pay an anna a day until he had paid back the ten rupees. He seemed to think my decision a kind one. The next morning he came to the bungalow a little late, and he had an ugly scar upon his back. I ascertained with some difficulty that the scar was his grandmother’s autograph. It was the only one she knew how to write, and she had inscribed it upon her grandson’s back with a stick, because he had brought home two annas instead of three. I sent the bearer for a gharri. When it came I took Ayah with me, and went in search of the grandmother. We passed through the native bazaar, and found her in a miserable little native hut. It was a chill, cool day. She lay half asleep upon the mud floor of her “home.” She was as ragged and far filthier than Sambo had been when I first saw him. The skin hung in thick wrinkles, half clinging to, half falling from, her bent bones. Her dark-red gums were toothless. In one palsied hand she grasped a stout stick. On her narrow forehead, beneath her scant gray hair, a circle of white paper and a daub of red paint denoted I know not what length of performed prayer and caste altitude. A brightly-burnished chattee stood in one corner. The woman and the chattee were all the room contained; and it was the only room in the house. I had come with big wrath in my heart. It was gone. Her poverty, her misery, had scarred Sambo’s back—not she. “Why does she sleep?” I asked Ayah. “Because she has no rice to eat,” was the answer. We went back to the bazaar. I bought fifteen pounds of rice for a rupee, and a big bag of gram for three annas, a bottle of milk for one anna, a packet of curry ingredients for two annas, six eggs, a few plantains, a loaf of bread, some firewood, a box of matches, a few simple cooking utensils, a bar of soap, a pair of cheap blankets, and a chicken. A chicken sounds rather lavish, but it only cost two annas. I have bought them in India for less. When we went back, Ayah lit a fire, and then we woke the old woman. She ate ravenously, though she seemed scarcely to have strength to eat at all. And I wondered what moment of distress had given her the sudden power to deal her grandson so cruel a blow. She had, however, the strength to thank me abundantly. I left a few small coins with her; bade Ayah tell her that if she never beat Sambo again she should be helped, and drove home through the soft, sweet twilight. Please don’t think that I am a philanthropist. I am not. I am a woman, and, like most women, very selfish. But I had tinned asparagus and a glass of very good claret for my dinner that night; and I should have lost half the flavour of the one and the bouquet of the latter had I not known that one old bag of Hindoo bones was no longer cold and famished. After dinner, out amid my little paradise of Indian flowers, I enjoyed the perfumed Indian night and the cup of coffee that Sambo brought me far more because I had arranged that, while he was in my service, his back should not again ache so cruelly. I gained among the simple natives the reputation of great generosity. And any European who fails to buy that reputation at the cost of a few wisely-spent rupees foregoes one of the greatest charms of an Indian sojourn.
A few days before Christmas my husband came home from Calcutta. The day of his arrival I saw Ayah and Sambo consulting together anxiously. I asked Ayah what the matter was. I thought her answer very naïve and droll: “We say is your sahib nice sahib? Will us like your sahib?”—“I hope so,” I said cheerfully. Ayah shook her head sadly and replied, “Me like no sahib.” I noticed, however, that all the other servants and even the mallie’s family, who lived in a hut near by, seemed greatly elated. It appears that they thought it far more of a social distinction to be the servants of a sahib than to be those of a memsahib. But Ayah did not like men, and poor Sambo had had so uncomfortable a life that he dreaded any new development.
My husband came at twilight. He was followed by six or seven coolies; for he had brought every one in my little establishment something. Sambo was very amazed. He had never dreamed of such a home-coming. After dinner all hands were called in to help to undo the parcels. Sambo sat on the floor, a useless heap of round-eyed boy. For my four-year-old son there was a big, ventilated wooden house. When it was opened a pair of beautiful little monkeys were disclosed. Sambo uttered a quick little cry of joy, and said something in excited Hindustani. Ayah was always my interpreter, perhaps because, after Sambo, she knew less English than any servant I had. She translated now: “Sambo say he feed monkeys, he wash monkeys, he be very good to monkeys.” And he kept his word. He was a most devoted valet to our mischievous pets. A few days ago, the monkey, whom I still have, seemed a little ill. I sent for the monkey-keeper at the Zoo. He remarked upon the beautiful condition of “Ned’s” coat and skin. “It’s had fine care when it was little, mum;” and he was quite right. Sambo had given it the best care.
A great big doll was in the next parcel. It had a fine satin frock, and could open and close its eyes in a most seductive way. Ayah’s heart warmed to the sahib at the sight, and she gathered baby and doll into one delighted embrace. When she realised that the sahib had brought her a silver bangle, she crept over and kissed my dress. My husband made Ayah many a little gift after that. She would always say, “Salaam, sahib,” and then seize upon and kiss some part of my raiment. I used to tease her by telling her that she ought to kiss her master’s coat sleeve instead of mine; but though she grew really fond of him, she was always horrified at my suggestion.
When Sambo saw the fine red and gold turban that had been brought to him from Calcutta, he wiped his eyes. When the last parcel was undone, the newly-arrived master made the servants stand in a line against the wall. There were fourteen of them; they were all smilingly anticipant of something pleasant; all except Sambo—he was horribly frightened. Each servant was asked in a stern tone if he or she had been good and served the memsahib well. They all said they had, except poor Sambo. He was one of those people who, Mr. Middlewick tells us, always “wept when they was spoke to harsh.” Then into each expectant hand was put a rupee. Sambo had never had an entire rupee before. I think it dawned upon him, as he stood looking at it, that his new sahib was a jolly, fun-loving fellow, and the kindest master in the world.
It was our fourth consecutive Christmas far from home; but we kept high holiday. That is an easy, inexpensive thing to do in India. There was a rocking-horse—such a rocking-horse! and a splendid doll’s house. There was a little gift for each servant, and a small coin, which they liked even better. After breakfast I called Sambo to me, and gave him ten rupees. I expected him to cry, but he did not. He looked up with bright smiling eyes and said, “Sambo love memsahib. Sambo be good. Memsahib jao, Sambo die.”
We had a grand dinner, and every servant who would take it had all they could eat and a bottle of beer. Only two refused to break their caste. The dhursie and the mallie were true to their faith. The next day they were the only two natives on the place who seemed quite well. The obvious moral is, that strict religious observance is accepted of the gods.
I have yet some of the little gifts that our servants gave me and the children that Christmas. Each of them spent very little, but not one of them could afford that little. I have never spent a Christmas in the East, no, nor a birthday, without receiving many tokens of my native servants’ good-will.
Sambo had strictly Eastern ideas of the relative positions of man and woman. One day, in the midst of a great romp with the children, my husband broke a cup belonging to a rare set of old china that had been given me in Tokio. I shook him. Sambo, who was in the room, covered his face with his hands and fled, crying, “The sahib will kill the memsahib!” I think he was relieved when he found that I was permitted to live yet a little longer. But I fear that he never again felt for his master entire respect. He said to my nurse, “Hindoo woman shake Hindoo man, Hindoo man kill Hindoo woman. Little European woman shake big European man, he laugh. Crab! Crab!” As for me, I had disgraced myself in his eyes for ever; I should have felt honoured and delighted to have my best china broken at the dear hand of my lord and master.
In India no “up-to-date” European feeds his servants. You give them from two annas to eleven annas a day; and you know that two annas a day is a fortune to a native. You know it, because every European that has lived in India longer than you tells you so. When we lived on the hills we kept chickens. A chicken is a luxury in England. In India it is a drug; but a drug we swallow, because meat is so bad and so scarce. Sambo had a genius for chickens—I mean an intense sympathy with chickens. It’s the same thing. He always fed our chickens; we looked on and admired. The garden about the bungalow looked empty, but when Sambo stepped on to the verandah with a dish of scraps, and cried, “Ah! Ah! Ah!” the garden swarmed with feathered denizens. One day I threw a crust to a chicken. We had been lunching, as we often did, on the verandah. When I had gone to my own room I looked out, and thought I saw Sambo pick up and eat the crust the fowl had disdained. That gave me a painful thought. I went to the larder—oh yes, we had one even there—and gathered on to a plate bits of meat and hunks of et ceteras. I called Sambo and told him to take the plate of food to the dogs and monkeys. I watched him, and saw him steal a piece of stale bread from the dish. I called Ayah and questioned her. She said, “Sambo very hungry, memsahib. He no eat two days but little I give him. His grandmother very sick. Send no food.”— “But,” I said, “he has three annas a day.”—“Yes, but two go to man they debt. One feed grandmother.” They had borrowed, as almost all Indians do, from a usurer more pitiless than those who, through the columns of the London dailies, proffer pecuniary accommodation to younger sons and M.P.’s. Sambo, though well-incomed, from the Anglo-Indian point of view, was almost starving. The poor old woman, of whom I had thought as being very comfortable, also was very hungry. After that I fed Sambo, which I shall always feel was very good of me. He ate so unlimitedly! He ate a loaf of bread as we eat an apple, and found it an appetiser. He romped with my children like another child, but watched over them like another mother.
I noticed one morning that he was trembling. I found that he and the mistree had been sleeping in the open without a film of cover. I had thought that I had been very good to all my servants; and two of them had been shivering with the cold! I gave them two miserable blankets, and permission to sleep in the henhouse. They thought me kind, and repaid me a hundredfold, as I have always found that “natives” will.
It is the custom in India to abuse your Indian servants. The dear black faces of American darkies clustered about my cradle. Perhaps, for that reason, I found myself very muchen rapportwith my native servants in India. I liked them, and I thought I understood them. They seemed to like and understand me.
Let me crown Sambo! I found out, through the most peculiarly revealed chain of circumstances, that he had lost, not stolen, the ten-rupee note; and it made me devoutly thankful that I had not been too hard upon the black innocent, nor soiled my nice European lips by calling him a thief.
CHAPTER XXXII
HOW WE KEPT HOUSE ON THE HILLS
Welived for six months absolutely among the natives. Half of that time my husband was not with us at all, but in Calcutta. The latter half he was at home occasionally, but only occasionally, for he was working in Bombay.
Nothing ordinary could have been more complete than our isolation from Europeans. For months we saw no white faces but our own. It was not a thrilling experience, because we were in no danger, we suffered no inconvenience, and we could telegraph to Bombay at any moment. But it was an interesting experience and a pleasant one. It was an experience that taught one the value of books and the value of one’s self—if one had any. It gave one calm and repose—calm and repose one could never afterwards quite lose. For up there on the Indian hills one learned how infinite Nature was, how irrevocable time and fate were, and how finite self was!
The hills about Khandalah were more beautiful than grand. The jungles were inexhaustible mazes of sweetness and beauty. Our own bungalow was a delightful place. But it was not Nature that most satisfied and entertained me. It was the people. The brown people—the common people of Ind.
A woman—a woman whose mind and whose personality were on a larger scale than mine—wrote to me from America, “What a privilege to be alone with the mountains!” I held it more a privilege to be alone with the natives, to study them, and to learn them, as I hope I did a little.
My stay in Khandalah increased wonderfully my already large respect for the natives. My servants behaved beautifully. Each little duty was as exactly performed as if we had been livingen régalein Calcutta or Bombay. Every petty little Eastern ceremony was punctiliously performed.
Every meal was as formally served and as carefully prepared as if we had been in Calcutta, and a dozen people coming to dinner. Each morning my favourite flowers were freshly gathered into the vases. None of my likes and dislikes were ever forgotten by my faithful brown friends. Ayah I loved best of all. I used to abuse the dhursies, and fly into a weekly fury with the dhobie. She was a wretch! The cook and I had sundry squabbles, but I adored his dishes, and that made him adore me. Methu, my own boy, was a perfect servant, save for a habit he had of stealing beverage, and the mallie was a perfect mother to me.
I believe that I was once or twice unkind to the dhute wallah, but he was always unkind to me; so I forgive myself.
Sambo crept slowly into my good graces; and I wish I had them, one and all, here in London. I hope they are all hale and hearty in their pretty hillside huts, and I send them my salaams.
We had incredibly little furniture in our bungalow, but we had a wealth of pretty, filmy draperies. We had precious things from China and Japan,—had them in cabinets well above the children’s heads. And our garden was an Oriental paradise—a perfumed dream of plenty and of matchless loveliness. I used to lie for hours in a hammock, watching the stars, listening to the jackals, smelling the fresh ottar of the rose trees, dreaming my woman’s dreams and perhaps companioning myself with a cigarette, or perhaps my pet monkeys lay asleep in my arms. Sometimes my hammock swung low with the added weight of my bairns; but not often at night. They used to fall asleep with the sun; for from sunrise till sunset they chased and rolled through the scented tangles of our wonderful garden. They were always entirely safe, though great green snakes and jackals were common, and panthers and tigers not over rare. Our great dog never left them,—nor did Ayah nor Sambo. All those three were faithful unto death, and Nizam, the dog, was decidedly clever.
I learned to read in Khandalah. I spent a great deal of my childhood in my father’s library. I grew up among books, the spoiled child, the companion of a booky man. But it was in Khandalah—alone on the Indian hills, at the edge of the Indian jungle, that I learned how great is the privilege of reading—that I learned to reverence books and to handle them with devout fingers. I had many books with me. Some were old friends; some had been selected for me by the best read man and the most comprehensively minded I ever knew. But in Khandalah I learned even a greater joy than the joy of reading. I learned the joy of living: I learned what a privilege it is to live.
Yes, I who have always loved life, I across whose life an everlasting shadow had fallen—the shadow of a little grave—learned in my hill solitude what a good thing it was to be alive. I should not have liked it for ever; but for six months it was ideal. “Could you have endured it alone?” a friend has asked me. Ah! I don’t know. I had my babies, and their nurse who is my dear friend, and sometimes I had my husband. I fear that I could endure but little alone. I am not self-reliant. A few nights ago I read in a London paper, “There is nothing on earth so lonely as a lonely woman.” I think that I have never read anything truer. I would rather be a confirmed invalid—yes, and a bedridden one—than a lone woman. But if I were a lone woman (which, to be frank, I can’t for a moment imagine myself) I would rather face my loneliness alone, in just such an Indian bungalow—alone, but for native servants and books and flowers and pet animals. I was not alone in Khandalah; but society in every ordinary sense I had none. Yet I was never once lonely. And when I ought to have gone to Bombay, I sent my nurse, and curled myself up in my hammock.
It is a privilege to be alone with Nature. Yes, and it is also a privilege, a great privilege, sometimes to be alone with one’s self.
Yes, it was a charming existence—ours at Khandalah. We were as free, as untrammelled by artificialities, as out of the world, as if we had been gipsies living in a tent. And yet we were as comfortable, our littleménagewas as well ordered, as if we had been domiciled in the best of hotels. Our omelets were always perfect; our gravies were never insipid; ourpièce de résistancewas always done to a turn; ourentréeswere always pretty, as well as toothsome; and our table was invariably a thing of beauty.
If I raised my voice and said, “Boy,” some one answered, “Memsahib,” and in a moment stood before me ready to obey. That was the acme of civilisation, was it not? And yet all day I might lie on the grass if I liked, and burrow in the sweet-scented ferns, and romp and roll with my babies and our dog and our monkeys, forgetting that I was a matron and ought to behave.
Oh, those days and those nights! We had no social obligations, no duties save to satisfy our own natures and to love and cuddle and cherish two babies. No care, save the care of trying to forget sorrow. No pain, but the sweet pain, the pain sweeter than joy—the pain of remembering.
It was a selfish life—the life I led there. Sometimes my conscience, which is usually the least troublesome friend I have, pricked me; then I tumbled out of my hammock and trudged off, on charity intent, to the little bazaar. In Khandalah, you can be a great philanthropist for half-a-crown.
That is one of the chief joys of living in Asia. You can be so very good at such a small cost.
We left our Khandalah bungalow even more suddenly than we had gone into it. I lost my temper because the landlord sent a servant from Bombay to strip one of the lemon trees, and omitted to say, “By your leave.” I believe that the landlord was legally right; but the garden-wealth of flower and fruit had been one of the great inducements to us when we took the place, and the landlord broke his moral if not his legal bond when he helped himself to his own lemons. At the time I was as nearly an invalid as so aggressive a woman can be, and I had an invalid’s selfish liking for those lemons. We had the only lemon trees in fruit for miles. Limes are the common tart fruit in that part of the world. But limes are one of the very few things tropical that I have never learned to love. I detest them; and I heartily grudged my landlord his lemons. Our month was almost “up.” “We’ll move,” I said.
“Where to?” asked my housekeeper.
“Anywhere,” I said. “But we’ll move to-morrow.”
And move we did. She, not I, accomplished it. I shall never know how she did it. At daylight she left in a gharri. At noon she returned triumphant. She had rented a bungalow at Lanaulie.
We packed in three hours; at least, every one but I packed. Packing is a useful occupation, and I never, by any chance, do anything useful. It was a wonderful day. My lucky husband was in Bombay. Three big bullock carts were loaded with our goods and chattels. When the last blanket load of et ceteras had been more or less securely fastened on to the cart, when our last chicken had been caught and placed a crowing crown upon the apex of the highest load, we started amid the wailings of the mallie and the metrani, who were the only servants who were not to accompany us. The mallie belonged body and soul to the landlord, and the metrani was not a favourite of mine. I led the procession. I was in a rather inelegant barouche, and my four-year-old son accompanied me. “Wadie” and baby and Ayah brought up the rear in another and more inelegant barouche. They were guarding the luggage—or thought they were. The men servants walked beside the bullock carts and were supposed also to protect my belongings.
Our new domicile was about three miles from our old. We arrived at our destination about six. The others arrived about eight. My son and I spent the interim in gazing upon our new domain, in being fairly decent to the extremely civil Goanese house-agent, and in getting preposterously hungry.
At eight o’clock the train drew near the bungalow gate. Ned and Cissy, my pet monkeys, were screaming wrathfully, my baby was asleep, and my aforesaid goods and chattels looked very dilapidated and shaken. We extemporised a bed for baby, and found a loaf of bread for the monkeys. The coolies hurled my ignominious parcels ignominiously to the ground; and the patient oxen stood placidly in the flood of swiftly come moonlight, which magnified and silvered their big, white beauty.
Our new abode was far more elegant—far less picturesque—than our old. Our new garden was a young, methodical thing. Our bungalow was systematically divided into proportional rooms, and over every door were panoramas of coloured glass. They were sectioned into monotonous squares, but the cruel reds, the crude greens, the impossible purples, and the magnificent yellows, would have told us that we were in Asia, had we not already known it.
It was nearly ten o’clock when the last cart had been unloaded and driven away. Then we discovered that we had almost nothing to eat. The hampers that had been hastily filled from our Khandalah larder had disappeared. It was too late to send to the bazaar. Fortunately one of the gharries was still waiting, as the gharri wallah and I had had a slight difference of opinionreremuneration. When I found that we stood upon the verge of midnight and famine, I yielded to the charioteer, on condition that he should drive, and drive quickly, with the house-agent, who had volunteered to see what he could gather together for us in the way of food. He came back in about three-quarters of an hour with several loaves of bread, two dozen eggs, and seven or eight seers of rice. In the meantime, the mistree had borrowed “curry stuff” from the mallie, and had killed a chicken. We had put the babies to bed, after giving them a huge supper of bread and milk and bananas. It was almost midnight when they called me to dinner. “I’m almost starved, Wadie,” I said, “and so thirsty. I hope they have cooled the beer.” Alas, they had not—for the very good reason that there was no beer to cool! It had been stolen with the baskets of food. I had to drink water with my curry, and water does not go well with curry. I was very angry that night, and vowed European vengeance upon the coolies who had stolen all our fresh vegetables, a cask of oysters, a pigeon pie, a dozen other viands, and, worse than all, my beer. But in the morning, when we found that they had taken nothing but food and drink, I forgave them. To confess the whole depth of my moral obliquity, I have never been able to regard the stealing of food as wrong. Good people have often told me that my moral sense is diseased. Perhaps it is, for I am far more apt to regard the man who goes hungry a fool, than to regard the man who steals bread a thief. So I laughed in the morning, and wired to my husband, who was in Bombay, “Have moved to Lanaulie. All food has been stolen. Send everything on next train.”
The night of our arrival, when we had finished our midnight dinner, I told the servants that they could have all the food in the house. They ate until daylight—caste or no caste. Sambo told me the next morning—told me with tears in his eyes—that he had never before had three eggs at once. I remember how much rice and how many plantains they ate, for it was really phenomenal. But I will not tell you, for you might not credit it. I venture to mention the little item of bread. The five ate eight loaves of bread!
Lanaulie was not so pretty a place as Khandalah, but it was very lovely. There were a few Europeans in Lanaulie, but we lived some distance from any one. My nearest European neighbour and my only European friend was my physician—a charming man.
We had been in Lanaulie only a few days when my landlord came from Bombay to see me. He was a high-caste Hindoo gentleman, and will always remain my beau ideal of a landlord. I thought that he had come for his rent when the boy brought me his card, but he had not. He had come to ask if we were comfortable, and to bring up a car-load of things that would, he thought, make the bungalow more home-like to Europeans. Wasn’t that nice of him? I believe that the place we had rented was his chief pride. We were only able to get it, because the death of a prominent member of his family having occurred in Bombay, Hindoo etiquette obliged the entire family to remain in Bombay through a long period of mourning. My landlord was a most interesting man and a large-minded one. His wife, whom I never met, was a strict observer of caste. She felt rather badly that Europeans were in their country house. Her dining-room was not in the house; but, in the Hindoo fashion, in an outer house. This room was locked from us by the mistress’s order, and in this dining-room were stored her Lares and Penates, namely, their cooking utensils and their chattees and their silk robes. Rigid high-caste Hindoos put on a silk garment before they eat. My landlord was far less conservative than his wife. He often had afternoon tea with us, and was kindly ready to explain to me any of their puzzling customs.
No strict Brahmin eats meat. I know a prominent Hindoo gentleman who used, with his son, to steal into the Lanaulie Hotel or even to the Dâk Bungalow, and in a private room have a hearty meal of meat. Father and son did it slyly, not because of public opinion, which they valued at about its real worth, but to save the feelings of the Hindoo wife and mother, who would have been in despair had she known that they ever ate meat.
I often shut my eyes and dream that I am back on my verandah at Lanaulie. I see the bhistie and his bullock come through the flowers to beg. The bhistie wants pice and the pretty bullock wants bread and fruit. They get both. The bhistie salaams—the bullock rubs his nose against my shoulder, and they go slowly, patiently back to their never-ending work. I see the sun set behind the splendid hills, I smell the world of roses that stretches about my door. A thousand fire-flies glitter in the grass. The big stars come out, the jackals call in the jungle, and now and then they scurry across our garden. I am holding a baby in my arms—a little baby that was born in Lanaulie.