"LO, THE POOR INDIAN!"
I mind the time when first I came
A stranger to the land.
HENRY LAWSON.
The house was unusually quiet. It was New Year's Day, and every man on
the place, and most of the maids, had gone off to a bush race meeting,
ten miles away. Even Mrs. Brown had allowed herself to be persuaded to
go and, arrayed in her best silk gown, had climbed laboriously into the
high double buggy, driven by Dave Boone, and departed, waving to Norah
a stout reticule that looked, Wally said, as though it contained
sausages! Only Mary, the housemaid, remained. Mary was a prim soul, and
did not care for race meetings. She had remarked that she would stay at
home and "crocher"!
Mr. Linton and the boys had ridden away after lunch. A valuable bull
had slipped down the side of a steep gully and injured himself, and
bush surgery was required. David Linton was rather notable in this
direction, and he had seen to it that Jim had had a thorough course of
veterinary training in Melbourne. Together they made, the squatter
remarked, a very respectable firm of practitioners! Cecil and Wally
were ready to perform unskilled labour as required, and it was quite
possible that their help might be needed, since no men were available.
So the picnic planned for the afternoon had had to be abandoned, and
Norah was left somewhat desolate, since she could not take part in the
"relief expedition."
"Hard on you, old girl," Jim had said; "but it can't be helped."
"No, of course it can't," Norah replied. She was well trained in the
emergencies of the country, and would probably have been perfectly
cheerful had this particular one only been something that would not
have excluded her. As it was, however, it was certainly disappointing,
and she felt somewhat "at a loose end" as she watched the four ride
off. There seemed nothing for her to do. It was beyond doubt that being
a girl had its drawbacks.
Within, the silence of the house was depressing, and the rooms seemed
much too large. Norah saw to one or two odd jobs, fed some chickens,
talked for a while to Fudge, the parrot, who was a companionable bird,
with a great flow of eloquence on occasions, wrote a couple of
letters--always a laborious proceeding for the maid of the bush--and
finally arrived at the decision that there was nothing to do. In the
kitchen Mary sat and "crochered" placidly at a fearful and wonderful
set of table mats. Norah watched her for a while, with a great scorn
for the gentle art that could produce such monstrosities. Then she
practised for half an hour, and at length, taking a book, sauntered off
to read by the creek.
Meanwhile Mary worked on contentedly, unconscious of outer things,
dreaming, perhaps, such dreams as may come to any one who makes
crocheted table mats of green and yellow. Now and then she rose to
replenish the fire, returning to her needle in the far-away corner of
the great kitchen, where Mrs. Brown's cane armchair always stood. She
glanced up in surprise after a while, when a shadow fell across the
doorway. Then, for Mary was a girl with "nerves," she jumped up with a
little scream.
An Indian hawker stood there--a big, black-bearded fellow, in dusty
clothes that had once been white, and on his head a turban of faded
pink. His heavy pack hung from his shoulder, but as the girl looked, he
slipped it to the ground, and stood erect, with a grunt of relief. Then
he grinned faintly at Mary, who had promptly put the table between
them, and asked the hawker's universal question:
"Anything to-day, Meesis?"
The Hindu hawker is still a figure to be met frequently in the
Bush--where he is, indeed, something of an institution. "Remote from
towns he runs" a race that no poetical licence can stretch to complete
the quotation by calling "godly." He carries a queer mixture of goods--a
kind of condensed bazaar-stall from his native land, with silks and
cottons, soaps, scents, boot laces and cheap jewellery, all packed into
a marvellously small space; and so he tramps his way through Australia.
No life can be lonelier. His stock of English is generally barely
enough to enable him to complete his deals; the free and independent
Australian regards him as "a nigger," and despises him accordingly;
while the Hindu, in his turn, has in his inmost soul a scorn far deeper
for his scorners--the pride of tradition and of caste. It is the caste
that keeps him rigidly to himself, since, as a rule, he can touch no
food that others have handled. He sits apart, over his own tiny fire,
baking his unappetising little cakes; and in many cases even the shadow
of a passer-by falling across his cookery is held to defile it beyond
possibility of his eating it. As a rule he has but one idea in life--to
make enough money to carry him back to end his days in comfort by the
waters of the Ganges.
There are certain well recognized hawkers in many districts--men who
have kept for a long time to a particular beat, and may be regarded as
fairly regular, and likely to turn up at each place at their route
three or four times a year. Such men have generally arrived at the
dignity of a pack-horse--no unmixed benefit in the eyes of people
driving, since most of the country horses are reduced to frenzy by the
sight of the lean screw with his immense white pack--the hawker is
merciless to his horse--led by the "black" man in flapping clothes and
gay turban. Still the regular hawkers are a more respectable class of
men, and their visits are often eagerly welcomed by the housewife in
the lonely country, many miles from a township, who finds herself
confronted with such problems as the necessity for lacing Johnny's
Sunday boots with strips of green hide, or the more serious one of a
dearth of trouser-buttons for his garments.
It is the casual hawker who is looked on with disfavour, and strikes
terror to the heart of many women. He has very frequently no money and
less principle; and being without reputation to sustain in the
district, is careless of his doings along a route that he probably does
not intend to visit again. He knows perfectly well that women and
children are afraid of him, and as a rule is very willing to work upon
that fear--though the sight of a man, or of a dog with character, is
sufficient to make him the most servile of his race. But where he meets
a lonely woman he is a very apparition of terror.
There was one hawker who came regularly to Billabong; a cheery old
fellow, well known and respected, whose caste was not strict enough to
prevent his refusing the station hospitality, and whose appearance was
always welcome. He had been coming so long that he knew them all well,
and took an almost affectionate interest in Jim and Norah, always
bringing some little gift for the latter. The men liked him, for he had
been known to "turn to" and work at a bush fire "as hearty as if he
weren't a fat little image av a haythen," said Murty O'Toole; Norah was
always delighted when old Ram Das came up the track, his unwieldy body
on two amazingly lean legs. Even Mary would not have been scared at his
appearance.
But this was not Ram Das--this Indian who stood looking at her with that
queer little half-smile, so different from the old man's wide and
cheerful grin. It was a strange man, and a terrible one in Mary's
sight. She gaped at him feebly across the table, and he watched her
with keen, calculating eyes. Presently he spoke again, this time a
little impatiently.
"You ask-a meesis annything to-day?"
"Nothin' to-day," said Mary, quickly and nervously.
"You ask-a meesis."
"She don't want anything," the girl quavered.
"You ask-a."
"I tell you she don't want anything--there ain't any missis," Mary said.
He looked at her unbelievingly, and broke into a speech of broken
English that was quite unintelligible to the frightened girl behind the
table. Then, as she did not answer him, he came a few steps nearer.
It was more than enough for Mary. She gave a terrified shriek and ran
for the nearest cover--the half-open door of the back kitchen behind
her. She banged it violently as she dashed through. There was no lock
on the door, so she could not stay there--but the window stood open, and
Mary went through it with all the nimbleness of fear. She came out into
the yard where the way lay clear to the house; and across the space
went Mary, cometwise, a vision of terror and flying cap strings, each
moment expecting to hear pursuing feet. Puck, the Irish terrier,
sleeping peacefully on the front verandah, leapt to his feet at the
sudden bang of the back door, and came dashing through the house in
search of the cause. Mary, half sobbing, welcomed him with fervour.
"Good dog, Puck!" she said. She reconnoitred through the nearest
window.
The Indian had come out of the kitchen, and now stood on the back
verandah, his dark face working. He looked uncertainly about him. Then
the back door opened a few inches--just so far that an enthusiastic
Irish terrier could squeeze through--and Mary's voice came.
"Good dog, Puck!--sool 'im!"
The door banged again, and the heavy lock shot home. Mary flew back to
the window, shutting and locking it frantically. She watched.
Puck wasted no time. He dashed at the hawker, with every fighting
instinct aroused, and the Hindu leaped back quickly, seizing with one
hand a broom that leaned against the wall. He met the terrier's
onslaught with a savage blow that sent the little dog head over heels
yards away. Puck picked himself up and came again like a whirlwind.
Then Mary screamed again, for the Hindu dropped the broom, and
something flashed in the sunlight--a long knife that came swiftly from
some hiding place in his voluminous draperies. He crouched to meet the
dog, his eyes gleaming, his lips drawn back from his teeth.
Puck was no fool. He arrested himself almost in midair, and planted
himself just out of the hawker's reach, his whole enraged little body a
vision of defiance, and barked madly. The Indian moved backwards,
uttering a flood of furious speech, while for each step that he moved
the terrier advanced another. Then Mary's heart gave a sudden leap; for
the hand that held the knife suddenly went behind him as he reached for
his pack and swung it to his shoulder. Puck was nearly upon him in the
moment that the knife no longer menaced, but the Hindu was quick; and
again the little dog drew back, rending the air with his barking.
Slowly the man backed off the verandah and along the path to the yard
gate, Puck following every step, loathing with all his fury that unfair
advantage of gleaming steel that kept him from his enemy. The Hindu
backed through the gate, and slammed it in the terrier's face, spitting
a volley of angry words as he went. Mary flung the window open and
called her protector anxiously, lest he should find some means of exit
and leave her alone; and Puck came back a few steps, turning again to
bark at his retreating foe. The tall form in the dusty clothes went
slowly down the track. Mary watched him out of sight. Then she fled to
her own room, locked herself in securely, and went, very properly, into
hysterics.
Meanwhile, at the creek, Norah was nodding sleepily over her book. It
was hot, and naturally a lazy day; everything seemed sleepy, from the
cows lying about under the willows on the banks to the bees droning
overhead. Tait, near her, was snoring gently. Even the water below
seemed to be rippling more lazily than usual; the splash of a leaping
fish made an unusual stir in the stillness. Moreover, her book was not
calculated to keep her awake. It was poetry, and Norah's soul did not
incline naturally to poetry, unless it were one of Gordon's stirring
rhymes, or something equally Australian in character. This was quite
different, but it had been Cecil's Christmas gift, and it had seemed to
Norah that politeness required her to study it.
"It's the rummiest stuff!" said the Bush damsel, hopelessly. She turned
to the cover, a dainty thing of pale blue and gold. "William Morris?
Didn't we have a stockman once called Bill Morris? But I'm pretty
certain he never wrote this. The name's the same, though!" thought
Norah, uncertainly. She turned back, and read anew, painstakingly:
No meat did ever pass my lips
Those days. (Alas! the sunlight slips
From off the gilded parclose dips,
And night comes on apace.)
"Then I'm positive it wasn't our Bill Morris, 'cause I never saw a
stockman who was a vegetarian. But what's a parclose? I'll have to ask
Cecil; but then he'll think me such a duffer not to know, and he'll be
so awfully patronizing. But what on earth does it all mean?"
She closed the book in despair, let her eyelids droop, and nodded a
little, while the book in its blue and gold cover slipped from her knee
to the grass. It was much easier to go to sleep than to read William
Morris. What a long time Dad and the boys were, doctoring Derrimut! It
was certainly dull.
A quick bark from Tait startled her. The collie had jumped up, and was
bristling with wrath at an unusual spectacle coming through the trees
towards her--a tall man, with a face of dusky bronze, surmounted by a
pink turban. His face was working angrily, and he muttered as he
walked, slowly, as if the pack on his shoulder were heavy. When Tait
barked he started for a moment, but then came on steadily--a collie is
rarely as formidable as an Irish terrier.
Norah paled a little. She was not timid, but no Australian girl takes
naturally to an encounter with a Hindu and there was no doubt that this
man was in a very bad temper. The place was lonely, too, and out of
sight of the house, even if she had not been painfully conscious that
there was not a man on the place should she need help. Still, there was
nothing to be gained by running. She backed against the tree, keeping
one hand on Tait's collar as the man came up.
"What do you want?"
He stopped, and the pack slipped to the grass. Then he broke into a
flood of rapid speech in his own tongue, gesticulating violently;
occasionally indicating the house with a sweep of his hand in that
direction. As he talked he worked himself up to further wrath--his voice
rose almost to a shout sometimes, and his face was not pleasant to see.
Once or twice he held his left hand out, and Norah saw that it was
bandaged.
For a minute or two she was badly frightened. Then, watching him, she
suddenly came to the conclusion that she had nothing to fear--that he
was telling her something he wanted her to know. She listened, trying
hard to catch some word in the flood of fluent foreign speech, and
twice she thought she made out the name of Ram Das. Then he finished
abruptly with almost the one word of Hindustani she knew, since it was
one the old hawker had taught her. "SUMJA," ("Do you understand?") he
hurled at her.
Norah shook her head.
"No, I don't 'SUMJA,'" she said: but her tone was friendly, and some of
the anger melted from the Indian's face, and was succeeded by a quick
relief. "Can't you speak English? You know Ram Das--Ram Das?" she
repeated, hoping that the name might convey something to him. To her
immense relief, the effect was instantaneous.
"Know Ram Das," said the man, struggling for words. "Him--him." He swept
the horizon vaguely with his hand.
"I know Ram Das," Norah put in. "Him good man."
The Hindu nodded violently. His face was natural again, and suddenly he
smiled at her. "You a meesis?" he asked. "Ram Das say l'il meesis."
"I'm little meesis," Norah said promptly. It was the old man's title
for her. "Did Ram Das send you?"
"Him send me," said the man, with evident pleasure in finding the word.
He struggled again for English, but finally gave it up, and held out
his left hand to her silently.
"Why, you're hurt!" Norah said. "Is that why Ram Das sent you?"
He nodded again, and began to unroll the long strip of cotton stuff
round his hand and wrist. It took a long time, and at last he had to go
down to the water and bathe the stiffened rag before it would come
away. Then he came back to Norah and held it out again--a long, hideous
gash right up the wrist, torn and swollen and inflamed.
"Oh!" said Norah, drawing back a pace, instinctively. "You poor fellow!
How did you do it?"
"Barb wire," said the Indian, simply. "Three days. Him bad. Ram Das,
him say you help." With this stupendous effort of eloquence he became
speechless again, still holding the torn wrist out to her.
"I should think so!" said Norah, forgetting everything in the sight of
that cruel wound. "Come on up to the house quickly!" She turned to lead
the way, but the man shook his head.
"Woman there," he stammered.
"It's all right," Norah told him. "Come along."
"Small dog," said the Hindu, unhappily. "Them afraid of me." He pointed
towards the house. "Been there."
"Oh-h!" said Norah, suddenly comprehending. She knew Mary. Then she
laughed. "You come with me; it's all right." She led the way, and the
hawker followed her. A few yards further on, Norah bethought herself of
something, and turned back.
"You must have that covered up," she told him. "No, not with that awful
rag again," with a faint shudder. She took out her handkerchief and
wrapped it lightly round the man's wrist. "That'll do for the
present--come on."
Puck, still in a state of profound indignation in the back yard, was
thrown into a paroxysm of fury at the sight of his enemy returning.
Norah had to chain him up before the Hindu would come inside the gate.
Then she led the way to the kitchen and called Mary.
No Mary answered, so Norah went about her preparations alone--a big
basin of hot water, boracic acid--standby of the Bush--soft rags, and
ointment from the "hospital drawer" Mrs. Brown kept always ready. She
shuddered a little as she began to bathe the wound, while the Indian
watched her with inscrutable face, never flinching, though the pain was
no small thing. It was done at last--cleansed, anointed, and carefully
bandaged. Then he smiled at her gratefully.
"Ram Das him say you good," he said. "Him truth!"
Norah laughed, somewhat embarrassed.
"Hungry?" she asked. "You take my food?"
It was always a delicate question, since the Hindu is easily offended
over a matter of caste. This man, however, was evidently as independent
as Ram Das, for he nodded, and when Norah brought him food, fell to
work upon it hungrily.
Thus it was that Mary, brought from the hysterical sanctuary of her
room by the pressing sense of the necessity of looking after the
kitchen fire, and coming back to her duties like a vestal of old, found
her dreaded enemy cheerfully eating in the kitchen, while Norah sat
near and carried on a one-sided conversation with every appearance of
friendliness, with Tait sleepily lying beside her--at which astonishing
spectacle Mary promptly shrieked anew. The Hindu rose, smiling
nervously.
"Come here, you duffer, Mary!" said Norah, who by this time had arrived
at something of an understanding of the previous happenings. "He's as
tame as tame. Why, old Ram Das sent him!"
"Miss Norah, he's got a knife on him!" said Mary, in a sepulchral
whisper. "I saw it with me own eyes. He nearly killed Puck with it!"
"Well, Puck was trying to kill him," said Norah, "and I guess if you
had a wrist like his, you'd defend yourself any way you could, if Puck
was at you! He's terribly sorry he frightened you--you didn't understand
him, that was all. Ram Das sent him to have his wrist fixed up, and his
name's Lal Chunder, and he's quite a nice man!"
"H'm!" said Mary doubtfully, relaxing so far as to enter the kitchen,
but keeping a respectful distance from the hawker, who took no further
notice of her, going on with his meal. "I don't 'old with them black
creechers in any shape or form, Miss Norah, an' it's my belief he'd
kill us all in our beds as soon as wink! Scarin' the wits out of one,
with his pink top-knot arrangement--such a thing for a man to wear!
Gimme white Orstralia!"
"Look out, he'll hear you!" said Norah, laughing. "He--"
"What talk is this?" said a cheerful voice; and Ram Das, very plump,
very hot and very beaming, came in at the kitchen door, and stood
looking at them. "I sent this young man to the li'l meesis, for that he
was hurt and in pain, and I know the fat woman is kind, and has the
brassic-acid." He glanced at Lal Chunder's bandaged wrist, and shot a
quick question at him in their own tongue, to which the other
responded. The old man turned back to Norah, not without dignity.
"We thank the l'il meesis," he said. "Lal Chunder is as my son: he
cannot speak, but he will not forget."
"Oh, that's all right," said Norah, turning a lively red. "It wasn't
anything, really, Ram Das--and his wrist was terribly sore. You'll both
camp here to-night, won't you? And have some tea--I'm sure you want it,
it's so hot."
"It will be good," said Ram Das, gratefully, sitting down. Then voices
and the sound of hoofs and the chink of bits came from outside; and
presently Mr. Linton and the boys came in, hot and thirsty.
Cecil's eyebrows went up as he beheld his cousin carrying a cup to the
stout old Hindu.
"It's the most extraordinary place I was ever at," he told himself
later, dressing for dinner, in the seclusion of his own room. From the
garden below came shouts and laughter, as Jim engaged Norah and Wally
in a strenuous set on the tennis court. "Absolutely no class limits
whatever, and no restrictions--why, she kept me waiting for my second
cup while she looked after that fat old black in the dirty white
turban! As for the boys--childish young hoodlums. Well, thank goodness
I'm not condemned to Billabong all my days!" With which serene
reflection Mr. Cecil Linton adjusted his tie nicely, smoothed a
refractory strand of hair in his forelock, and went down to dinner.