Behind the Bungalow, Edward Hamilton Aitken [e novels to read online .txt] 📗

which band will play at the band-stand this evening, and the leading columns are occasionally excruciatingly good, when a literary corporal of the Fusiliers discusses the political horizon, or unmasks the Herald, pointing out with the most pungent sarcasm how "our virtuous contemporary puts his hands in his breeches pockets, like a crocodile, and sheds tears;" but during the parade season the corporal writes little, and articles by the regular staff, upon the height to which cantonment hedges should be allowed to grow, are apt to be dull. For news we depend on Tom. He appears reticent at first, but be patient. Let him put the soap on, and then tap him gently.

"Well, Tom, what news this morning?"

"No news, sar." After a long pause, "Commissioner Saheb coming to- morrow."

"To-morrow? No, he is not coming for three weeks."

"To-morrow coming. Not telling anybody; quietly coming."

"Why?"

"God knows." After another pause, "Nana Shett give Mamletdar 500 rupee for not send his son to prison. Then Nana Shett's brother he fight with Nana Shett, so he write letter to Commissioner and tell him you come quietly and make inquire."

"The Mamletdar has been taking bribes, has he?"

"Everybody taking. Fouzdar take 200 rupee. Dipooty take 500 rupee."

"What! Does the Deputy Collector take bribes?"

"God knows. Black man very bad. All black man same like bad."

"Then are you not a black man?"

Tom smiles pleasantly and makes a fresh start.

"Colonel Saheb's madam got baby."

"Is it a boy or a girl?"

"Girl, sar. Colonel Saheb very angry."

"Why?"

"He say, 'I want boy. Why always girl coming?' Get very angry. Beat butler with stick."

Yes, Tom is a great institution. Who can estimate how much we owe to him for the circulation of that lively interest in one another's well-being which characterises the little station? Tom comes, like the Pundit, in the morning, but he is different from the Pundit and we welcome him. He is not a shadow of the black examination-cloud which lowers over us. There is no flavour of grammars and dictionaries about him. Even if he finds you still in bed, conscience gets no support from him. He does not awaken you, but slips in with noiseless tread, lifts the mosquito curtains, proceeds with his duty and departs, leaving no token but a gentle dream about the cat which came and licked your cheeks and chin with its soft, warm tongue, and scratched you playfully with its claws, while a cold frog, embracing your nose, looked on and smiled a froggy smile. The barber's hand IS cold and clammy. Chacun a son gout. I do not like him. I grow my beard, and Tom looks at me as the Chaplain regards dissenters.


OUR "NOWKERS"--THE MARCH PAST


Now it is time to close our inspection and order a march past. I think I have marshalled the whole force. It may seem a small band to you, if you have lived in imperial Bengal, for we of Bombay do not generally keep a special attendant to fill and light our pipe, and our tatoo does not require a man to cut its grass. Some of us even put on our own clothes. In short, we have not carried the art of living to such oriental perfection as prevails on the other side of India, and a man of simple tastes will find my company of fourteen a sufficient staff. There they are, Sub hazir hai, "they are all present," the butler says, except one humble, but necessary officer, who does not like to appear. He is known familiarly by many names. You may call him Plantagenet, for his emblem is the lowly broom; but since his modesty keeps him in the background, we will leave him there. The rest are before you, the faithful corps with whose help we transact our exile life. You may look at them from many standpoints, and how much depends on which you take! I suspect the commonest with us masters is that which regards boy, butler, mussaul, cook, as just so many synonyms for channels by which the hard-earned rupee, which is our life-blood, flows from us continually. This view puts enmity between us and them, between our interests and theirs. It does not come into our minds, that when we submit our claim for an extra allowance of Rs. 200 under section 1735 of the Code, and the mussaul gets the butler to prefer a humble request for an increase of one rupee a month to his slender puggar, we and the mussaul are made kin by that one touch of nature. We spurn the request and urge the claim, with equal wonderment at the effrontery of mussauls and the meanness of Governments. And "the angels weep."

Shift your standpoint, and in each cringing menial you will see a black token of that Asiatic metamorphosis through which we all have passed. What a picture! Look at yourself as you stand there in purple sublimity, trailing clouds of darkness from the middle ages whence you come, planting your imperial foot on all the manly traditions of your own free country, and pleased with the grovelling adulations of your trembling serfs. And now it is not the angels who weep, but the Baboo of Bengal. His pale and earnest brow is furrowed with despair as he turns from you. For whither shall he turn? When his bosom palpitates with the intense joy of newborn aspirations for liberty, to whom shall he go if the Briton, the champion of the world's freedom, has drunk of Comus's cup and become an oriental satrap? Ah! there is still hope. The "large heart of England" beats still for him. In the land of John Hampden and Labouchere there are thousands yet untainted by the plague, who keep no servant, who will listen to the Baboo while he tells them about you, and perhaps return him to parliament.

There is a third view of the case, fraught with much content to those who can take it, and, happily, it is the only view possible to the primitive intelligences over which we exercise domestic lordship. In this view they are, indeed, as we regard them--so many channels by which the rupee may flow from us; but what are we, if not great reservoirs, built to feed those very channels? And so, with that "sweet reasonableness" which is so pleasant a feature of the Hindoo mind, your boy or butler, being the main conduit, sets himself to estimate the capacity of the reservoir, that he may adapt the gauge of each pipe and regulate the flow. And, as the reservoir grows greater, as the assistant becomes a collector and the collector a commissioner, the pipes are extended and enlarged, and all rejoice together. The moral beauty of this view of the situation grows upon you as you accustom your mind to dwell on it. Is it not pleasant to think of yourself as a beneficent irrigation work, watering a wide expanse of green pasture and smiling corn, or as a well in a happy garden, diffusing life and bloom? Look at the syce's children. Phil Robinson says there are nine of them, all about the same age and dressed in the same nakedness. As they squat together there, indulging "the first and purest of our instincts" in the mud or dust of the narrow back road, reflect that their tender roots are nourished by a thin rivulet of rupees which flows from you. If you dried up, they would droop and perhaps die. The butler has a bright little boy, who goes to school every day in a red velvet cap and print jacket, with a small slate in his hand, and hopes one day to climb higher in the word than his father. His tendrils are wrapped about your salary. Nay, you may widen the range of your thoughts: the old hut in the environs of Surat, with its patch of field and the giant gourds, acknowledges you, and a small stream, diverted from one of the channels which you supply, is filling a deep cistern in one of the back streets of Goa. Pardon me if I think that the untutored Indian's thought is better even for us than any which we have framed for ourselves. Imagine yourself as a sportsman, spear in hand, pursuing the wild V.C. through fire and water, or patiently stalking the wary K.C.B., or laying snares for the gentle C.I.E.; or else as a humble industrious dormouse lining a warm nest for the winter of your life in Bath or Tunbridge Wells; or as a gay butterfly flitting from flower to flower while the sunshine of your brief day may last; or simply as a prisoner toiling at the treadmill because you must: the well in the garden is a pleasanter conception than all these and wholesomer. Foster it while you may. Now that India has wakened up and begun to spin after the rest of the great world down the ringing grooves of change, these tints of dawn will soon fade away, and in the light of noon the instructed Aryan will learn to see and deplore the monstrous inequalities in the distribution of wealth. He will come to understand the essential equality of all men, and the real nature of the contract which subsists between master and servant. Yes, I am afraid the day is fast drawing near when you will no longer venture to cut the hamal's pay for letting mosquitoes into your bed curtains and he will no longer join his palms and call you his father and mother for doing so. What a splendid capacity for obedience there is in this ancient people! And our relations with them have certainly taught us again how to govern, which is one of the forgotten arts in the West. Where in the world to-day is there a land so governed as this Indian Empire?

And now each man wants his "character" before he makes his last salaam, and what shall I say? "The bearer --- has been in my service since --- and I have always found him --- " So far good; but what next? Honest?--Yes. Willing?--Certainly. Careful?--Very. Hardworking?--Well, I have often told him that he was a lazy scoundrel, and that he might easily take a lesson in activity from the bheestee's bullock, and perhaps I spoke the truth. But, after all, he gets up in the morning an hour before me, and eats his dinner after I have retired for the night. He gets no Saturday half- holiday, and my Sabbath is to him as the other days of the week. And so the hard things I have said of him and to him are forgotten, and charity triumphs at the last. And when my furlough is over and I return to these shores, the whole troop will be at the Apollo Bunder, waiting to welcome back their old master and eat his salt again.


POSTSCRIPT. THE GOWLEE, OR DOODWALLAH


Gopal, the Gowlee, haunts me in my dreams, complaining that he has been left out in the cold. I had classed him with the borah and the baker, as outsiders with whom I had merely business relations; but Gopal seems to urge that he is not on