that's a sign of ill-luck, as sure as Death. He's all brown, too, and
no one ever attends to him. That's the Memsahib's work, I know; because,
when Tsin-ling tried to burn gilt paper before him, she said it was a
waste of money, and, if he kept a stick burning very slowly, the Joss
wouldn't know the difference. So now we've got the sticks mixed with
a lot of glue, and they take half-an-hour longer to burn, and smell
stinky. Let alone the smell of the room by itself. No business can get
on if they try that sort of thing. The Joss doesn't like it. I can see
that. Late at night, sometimes, he turns all sorts of queer colors--blue
and green and red--just as he used to do when old Fung-Tching was alive;
and he rolls his eyes and stamps his feet like a devil.
I don't know why I don't leave the place and smoke quietly in a little
room of my own in the bazar. Most like, Tsin-ling would kill me if
I went away--he draws my sixty rupees now--and besides, it's so much
trouble, and I've grown to be very fond of the Gate. It's not much to
look at. Not what it was in the old man's time, but I couldn't leave it.
I've seen so many come in and out. And I've seen so many die here on the
mats that I should be afraid of dying in the open now. I've seen some
things that people would call strange enough; but nothing is strange
when you're on the Black Smoke, except the Black Smoke. And if it was,
it wouldn't matter. Fung-Tching used to be very particular about his
people, and never got in any one who'd give trouble by dying messy and
such. But the nephew isn't half so careful. He tells everywhere that he
keeps a “first-chop” house. Never tries to get men in quietly, and make
them comfortable like Fung-Tching did. That's why the Gate is getting a
little bit more known than it used to be. Among the niggers of course.
The nephew daren't get a white, or, for matter of that, a mixed skin
into the place. He has to keep us three of course--me and the Memsahib
and the other Eurasian. We're fixtures. But he wouldn't give us credit
for a pipeful--not for anything.
One of these days, I hope, I shall die in the Gate. The Persian and
the Madras man are terrible shaky now. They've got a boy to light their
pipes for them. I always do that myself. Most like, I shall see them
carried out before me. I don't think I shall ever outlive the Memsahib
or Tsin-ling. Women last longer than men at the Black-Smoke, and
Tsin-ling has a deal of the old man's blood in him, though he DOES smoke
cheap stuff. The bazar-woman knew when she was going two days before her
time; and SHE died on a clean mat with a nicely wadded pillow, and the
old man hung up her pipe just above the Joss. He was always fond of her,
I fancy. But he took her bangles just the same.
I should like to die like the bazar-woman--on a clean, cool mat with a
pipe of good stuff between my lips. When I feel I'm going, I shall ask
Tsin-ling for them, and he can draw my sixty rupees a month, fresh and
fresh, as long as he pleases, and watch the black and red dragons have
their last big fight together; and then....
Well, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters much to me--only I wished
Tsin-ling wouldn't put bran into the Black Smoke.
THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD DIN.
“Who is the happy man? He that sees in his own house at home little
children crowned with dust, leaping and falling and crying.”
Munichandra, translated by Professor Peterson.
The polo-ball was an old one, scarred, chipped, and dinted. It stood
on the mantelpiece among the pipe-stems which Imam Din, khitmatgar, was
cleaning for me.
“Does the Heaven-born want this ball?” said Imam Din, deferentially.
The Heaven-born set no particular store by it; but of what use was a
polo-ball to a khitmatgar?
“By Your Honor's favor, I have a little son. He has seen this ball, and
desires it to play with. I do not want it for myself.”
No one would for an instant accuse portly old Imam Din of wanting
to play with polo-balls. He carried out the battered thing into the
verandah; and there followed a hurricane of joyful squeaks, a patter of
small feet, and the thud-thud-thud of the ball rolling along the ground.
Evidently the little son had been waiting outside the door to secure his
treasure. But how had he managed to see that polo-ball?
Next day, coming back from office half an hour earlier than usual, I was
aware of a small figure in the dining-room--a tiny, plump figure in a
ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, half-way down the
tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning
to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this was the
“little son.”
He had no business in my room, of course; but was so deeply absorbed in
his discoveries that he never noticed me in the doorway. I stepped into
the room and startled him nearly into a fit. He sat down on the ground
with a gasp. His eyes opened, and his mouth followed suit. I knew what
was coming, and fled, followed by a long, dry howl which reached the
servants' quarters far more quickly than any command of mine had ever
done. In ten seconds Imam Din was in the dining-room. Then despairing
sobs arose, and I returned to find Imam Din admonishing the small sinner
who was using most of his shirt as a handkerchief.
“This boy,” said Imam Din, judicially, “is a budmash, a big budmash.
He will, without doubt, go to the jail-khana for his behavior.” Renewed
yells from the penitent, and an elaborate apology to myself from Imam
Din.
“Tell the baby,” said I, “that the Sahib is not angry, and take him
away.” Imam Din conveyed my forgiveness to the offender, who had
now gathered all his shirt round his neck, string-wise, and the yell
subsided into a sob. The two set off for the door. “His name,” said Imam
Din, as though the name were part of the crime, “is Muhammad Din, and he
is a budmash.” Freed from present danger, Muhammad Din turned round,
in his father's arms, and said gravely:--“It is true that my name is
Muhammad Din, Tahib, but I am not a budmash. I am a MAN!”
From that day dated my acquaintance with Muhammad Din. Never again did
he come into my dining-room, but on the neutral ground of the compound,
we greeted each other with much state, though our conversation was
confined to “Talaam, Tahib” from his side and “Salaam Muhammad Din” from
mine. Daily on my return from office, the little white shirt, and the
fat little body used to rise from the shade of the creeper-covered
trellis where they had been hid; and daily I checked my horse here, that
my salutation might not be slurred over or given unseemly.
Muhammad Din never had any companions. He used to trot about the
compound, in and out of the castor-oil bushes, on mysterious errands
of his own. One day I stumbled upon some of his handiwork far down
the ground. He had half buried the polo-ball in dust, and stuck six
shrivelled old marigold flowers in a circle round it. Outside that
circle again, was a rude square, traced out in bits of red brick
alternating with fragments of broken china; the whole bounded by a
little bank of dust. The bhistie from the well-curb put in a plea for
the small architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby and did
not much disfigure my garden.
Heaven knows that I had no intention of touching the child's work then
or later; but, that evening, a stroll through the garden brought me
unawares full on it; so that I trampled, before I knew, marigold-heads,
dust-bank, and fragments of broken soap-dish into confusion past all
hope of mending. Next morning I came upon Muhammad Din crying softly to
himself over the ruin I had wrought. Some one had cruelly told him
that the Sahib was very angry with him for spoiling the garden, and had
scattered his rubbish using bad language the while. Muhammad Din
labored for an hour at effacing every trace of the dust-bank and pottery
fragments, and it was with a tearful apologetic face that he said,
“Talaam Tahib,” when I came home from the office. A hasty inquiry
resulted in Imam Din informing Muhammad Din that by my singular favor he
was permitted to disport himself as he pleased. Whereat the child took
heart and fell to tracing the ground-plan of an edifice which was to
eclipse the marigold-polo-ball creation.
For some months, the chubby little eccentricity revolved in his humble
orbit among the castor-oil bushes and in the dust; always fashioning
magnificent palaces from stale flowers thrown away by the bearer, smooth
water-worn pebbles, bits of broken glass, and feathers pulled, I fancy,
from my fowls--always alone and always crooning to himself.
A gayly-spotted sea-shell was dropped one day close to the last of his
little buildings; and I looked that Muhammad Din should build something
more than ordinarily splendid on the strength of it. Nor was I
disappointed. He meditated for the better part of an hour, and his
crooning rose to a jubilant song. Then he began tracing in dust. It
would certainly be a wondrous palace, this one, for it was two
yards long and a yard broad in ground-plan. But the palace was never
completed.
Next day there was no Muhammad Din at the head of the carriage-drive,
and no “Talaam Tahib” to welcome my return. I had grown accustomed to
the greeting, and its omission troubled me. Next day, Imam Din told me
that the child was suffering slightly from fever and needed quinine. He
got the medicine, and an English Doctor.
“They have no stamina, these brats,” said the Doctor, as he left Imam
Din's quarters.
A week later, though I would have given much to have avoided it, I met
on the road to the Mussulman burying-ground Imam Din, accompanied by one
other friend, carrying in his arms, wrapped in a white cloth, all that
was left of little Muhammad Din.
ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS.
If your mirror be broken, look into still water; but have a care
that you do not fall in.
Hindu Proverb.
Next to a requited attachment, one of the most convenient things that a
young man can carry about with him at the beginning of his career, is
an unrequited attachment. It makes him feel important and business-like,
and blase, and cynical; and whenever he has a touch of liver, or suffers
from want of exercise, he can mourn over his lost love, and be very
happy in a tender, twilight fashion.
Hannasyde's affair of the heart had been a Godsend to him. It was four
years old, and the girl had long since given up thinking of it. She had
married and had many cares of her own. In the beginning, she had told
Hannasyde that, “while she could never be anything more than a sister
to him, she would always take the deepest interest in his welfare.” This
startlingly new and original remark gave Hannasyde something to think
over for two years; and his own vanity filled in the other twenty-four
months. Hannasyde was quite different from Phil Garron, but, none the
less, had several points in common with that far too lucky man.
He kept his unrequited attachment by him as men keep a well-smoked
pipe--for comfort's sake, and because it had grown dear in the using. It
brought him happily through the Simla season. Hannasyde was not lovely.
There was a crudity in his manners, and a roughness in the way in which
he helped a lady on to her horse, that did not attract the other sex
to him. Even if he had cast about for their favor, which he did not. He
kept his wounded heart all to himself for a while.
Then trouble came to him. All who go to Simla, know the slope from the
Telegraph to the Public Works Office. Hannasyde was loafing up the hill,
one September morning between calling hours, when a 'rickshaw came down
in a hurry, and in the 'rickshaw sat the living, breathing image of the
girl who had made him so happily unhappy. Hannasyde leaned against the
railing and gasped. He wanted to run downhill after the 'rickshaw, but
that was impossible; so he went forward with most of his blood in his
temples. It was impossible, for many reasons, that the woman in the
'rickshaw could be the girl he had known. She was, he discovered later,
the wife of a man from Dindigul, or Coimbatore, or some out-of-the-way
place, and she had come up to Simla early in the season for the good of
her health. She was going back to Dindigul, or wherever it was, at the
end of the season; and in all likelihood would never return to Simla
again, her proper Hill-station being Ootacamund. That night, Hannasyde,
raw and savage from the raking up of all old feelings, took counsel with
himself for one measured hour. What he decided upon was this; and you
must decide for yourself how much genuine affection for the old love,
and how much a very natural inclination to go abroad and enjoy himself,
affected the decision. Mrs. Landys-Haggert would never in all human
likelihood cross his path again. So whatever he did didn't much matter.
She was marvellously like the girl who “took a deep interest” and the
rest of the formula. All things considered, it would be pleasant to make
the acquaintance of Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and for a little time--only a
very little time--to make believe that he was with Alice Chisane again.
Every one is more or less mad on one point. Hannasyde's particular
monomania was his old love, Alice Chisane.
He made it his business to get introduced to Mrs. Haggert, and the
introduction prospered. He also made it his business to see as much as
he could of that lady. When a man is in earnest as to interviews, the
facilities which Simla offers are startling. There are garden-parties,
and tennis-parties, and picnics, and luncheons at Annandale, and
rifle-matches, and dinners and balls; besides rides and walks, which are
matters of private arrangement. Hannasyde had started with the intention
of seeing a likeness, and he ended by doing much more. He wanted to
be deceived, he meant to be deceived, and he deceived himself very
thoroughly. Not only were the face and figure, the face and figure of
Alice Chisane, but the voice and lower tones were exactly the same, and
so were the turns of speech; and the little mannerisms, that every woman
has, of gait and gesticulation, were absolutely and identically the
same. The turn of the head was the same; the tired look in the eyes
at the end of a long walk was the same; the sloop and wrench over
the saddle to hold in a pulling horse was the same; and once, most
marvellous of all, Mrs. Landys-Haggert singing to herself in the next
room, while Hannasyde was waiting to take her for a ride, hummed, note
for note, with a throaty quiver of the voice in the second line:--“Poor
Wandering One!” exactly as Alice Chisane had hummed it for Hannasyde in
the dusk of an English drawing-room. In the actual woman herself--in
the soul of her--there was not the least likeness; she and Alice Chisane
being cast in different moulds. But all that Hannasyde wanted to know
and see and think about, was this maddening and perplexing likeness of
face and voice and manner. He was bent on making a fool of himself that
way; and he was in no sort disappointed.
Open and obvious devotion from any sort of man is always pleasant to
any sort of woman; but Mrs. Landys-Haggert, being a woman of the world,
could make nothing of Hannasyde's admiration.
He would take any amount of trouble--he was a selfish man habitually--to
meet and forestall, if possible, her wishes. Anything she told him to do
was law; and he was, there could be no doubting it, fond of her company
so long as she talked to him, and kept on talking about trivialities.
But when she launched into expression of her personal views and her
wrongs, those small social differences that make the spice of Simla
life, Hannasyde was neither pleased nor interested. He didn't want
to know anything about Mrs. Landys-Haggert, or her experiences in
the past--she had travelled nearly all over the world, and could talk
cleverly--he wanted the likeness of Alice Chisane before his eyes and
her voice in his ears. Anything outside that, reminding him of another
personality jarred, and he showed that it did.
Under the new Post Office, one evening, Mrs. Landys-Haggert turned on
him, and spoke her mind shortly and without warning. “Mr. Hannasyde,”
said she, “will you be good enough to explain why you have appointed
yourself my special cavalier servente? I don't understand it. But I
am perfectly certain, somehow or other, that you don't care the least
little bit in the world for ME.” This seems to support, by the way, the
theory that no man can act or tell lies to a woman without being found
out. Hannasyde was taken off his guard. His defence never was a strong
one, because he was always thinking of himself, and he blurted out,
before he knew what he was saying, this inexpedient answer:--“No more I
do.”
The queerness of the situation and the reply, made Mrs. Landys-Haggert
laugh. Then it all came out; and at the end of Hannasyde's lucid
explanation, Mrs. Haggert said, with the least little touch of scorn in
her voice:--“So I'm to act as the lay-figure for you to hang the rags of
your tattered affections on, am I?”
Hannasyde didn't see what answer was required, and he devoted himself
generally and vaguely to the praise of Alice Chisane, which was
unsatisfactory. Now it is to be thoroughly made clear that Mrs. Haggert
had not the shadow of a ghost of an interest in Hannasyde. Only....
only no woman likes being made love through instead of to--specially on
behalf of a musty divinity of four years' standing.
Hannasyde did not see that he had made any very particular exhibition
of himself. He was glad to find a sympathetic soul in the arid wastes of
Simla.
When the season ended, Hannasyde went down to his own place and Mrs.
Haggert to hers. “It was like making love to a ghost,” said Hannasyde
to himself, “and it doesn't matter; and now I'll get to my work.” But
he found himself thinking steadily of the Haggert-Chisane ghost; and he
could not be certain whether it was Haggert or Chisane that made up the
greater part of the pretty phantom.
. . . . . . . . .
He got understanding a month later.
A peculiar point of this peculiar country is the way in which a
heartless Government transfers men from one end of the Empire to the
other. You can never be sure of getting rid of a friend or an enemy till
he or she dies. There was a case once--but that's another story.
Haggert's Department ordered him up from Dindigul to the Frontier at
two days' notice, and he went through, losing money at every step, from
Dindigul to his station. He dropped Mrs. Haggert at Lucknow, to stay
with some friends there, to take part in a big ball at the Chutter
Munzil, and to come on when he had made the new home a little
comfortable. Lucknow was Hannasyde's station, and Mrs. Haggert stayed
a week there. Hannasyde went to meet her. And the train came in,
he discovered which he had been thinking of for the past month. The
unwisdom of his conduct also struck him. The Lucknow week, with two
dances, and an unlimited quantity of rides together, clinched matters;
and Hannasyde found himself pacing this circle of thought:--He
adored Alice Chisane--at least he HAD adored her. AND he admired
Mrs. Landys-Haggert because she was like Alice Chisane. BUT Mrs.
Landys-Haggert was not in the least like Alice Chisane, being a thousand
times more adorable. NOW Alice Chisane was “the bride of another,” and
so was Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and a good and honest wife too. THEREFORE,
he, Hannasyde, was.... here he called himself several hard names, and
wished that he had been wise in the beginning.
Whether Mrs. Landys-Haggert saw what was going on in his mind, she alone
knows. He seemed to take an unqualified interest in everything connected
with herself, as distinguished from the Alice-Chisane likeness, and he
said one or two things which, if Alice Chisane had been still betrothed
to him, could scarcely have been excused, even on the grounds of the
likeness. But Mrs. Haggert turned the remarks aside, and spent a long
time in making Hannasyde see what a comfort and a pleasure she had been
to him because of her strange resemblance to his old love. Hannasyde
groaned in his saddle and said, “Yes, indeed,” and busied himself with
preparations for her departure to the Frontier, feeling very small and
miserable.
The last day of her stay at Lucknow came, and Hannasyde saw her off
at the Railway Station. She was very grateful for his kindness and the
trouble he had taken, and smiled pleasantly and sympathetically as one
who knew the Alice-Chisane reason of that kindness. And Hannasyde abused
the coolies with the luggage, and hustled the people on the platform,
and prayed that the roof might fall in and slay him.
As the train went out slowly, Mrs. Landys-Haggert leaned out of the
window to say goodbye:--“On second thoughts au revoir, Mr. Hannasyde. I
go Home in the Spring, and perhaps I may meet you in Town.”
Hannasyde shook hands, and said very earnestly and adoringly:--“I hope
to Heaven I shall never see your face again!”
And Mrs. Haggert understood.
WRESSLEY OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE.
I closed and drew for my love's sake,
That now is false to me,
And I slew the Riever of Tarrant Moss,
And set Dumeny free.
And ever they give me praise and gold,
And ever I moan my loss,
For I struck the blow for my false love's sake,
And not for the men at the Moss.
Tarrant Moss.
One of the many curses of our life out here is the want of atmosphere in
the painter's sense. There are no half-tints worth noticing. Men stand
out all crude and raw, with nothing to tone them down, and nothing to
scale them against. They do their work, and grow to think that there is
nothing but their work, and nothing like their work, and that they are
the real pivots on which the administration turns. Here is an instance
of this feeling. A half-caste clerk was ruling forms in a Pay Office. He
said to me:--“Do you know what would happen if I added or took away one
single line on this sheet?” Then, with the air of a conspirator:--“It
would disorganize the whole of the Treasury payments throughout the
whole of the Presidency Circle! Think of that?”
If men had not this delusion as to the ultra-importance of their own
particular employments, I suppose that they would sit down and kill
themselves. But their weakness is wearisome, particularly when the
listener knows that he himself commits exactly the same sin.
Even the Secretariat believes that it does good when it asks an
over-driven Executive Officer to take census of wheat-weevils through a
district of five thousand square miles.
There was a man once in the Foreign Office--a man who had grown
middle-aged in the department, and was commonly said, by irreverent
juniors, to be able to repeat Aitchison's “Treaties and Sunnuds”
backwards, in his sleep. What he did with his stored knowledge only the
Secretary knew; and he, naturally, would not publish the news abroad.
This man's name was Wressley, and it was the Shibboleth, in those days,
to say:--“Wressley knows more about the Central Indian States than any
living man.” If you did not say this, you were considered one of mean
understanding.
Now-a-days, the man who says that he knows the ravel of the inter-tribal
complications across the Border is of more use; but in Wressley's time,
much attention was paid to the Central Indian States. They were called
“foci” and “factors,” and all manner of imposing names.
And here the curse of Anglo-Indian life fell heavily. When Wressley
lifted up his voice, and spoke about such-and-such a succession to
such-and-such a throne, the Foreign Office were silent, and Heads
of Departments repeated the last two or three words of Wressley's
sentences, and tacked “yes, yes,” on them, and knew that they were
“assisting the Empire to grapple with serious political contingencies.”
In most big undertakings, one or two men do the work while the rest sit
near and talk till the ripe decorations begin to fall.